Wishing for Quality, not Attack, Journalism

Tuesday evening the major networks began their nightly news, spending close to five of their 30-minute programs, on what they apparently believed was such a major story that it deserved to hold the lead position.  That story was that Sean Spicer, President Trump’s Press Secretary, was “in trouble”:  the report was that he had compared Hitler favorably to Assad, that he had attacked Jews, during Passover no less! And that he should be fired.  They played the tape from the news conference.  Then they told us that Spicer “attempted to clarify” and finally the story ended with the fact that Spicer had apologized. 

So, then, it really was not much of a story.  Moreover, any normal person with any common sense at all understood that Spicer was simply attacking the horror of Assad’s random and indiscriminate use of bombs loaded with chemical weapons.  Period.

But, the news and the anti-Trump brigade saw an opening and viciously attacked.  Meanwhile, they wasted valuable time out of their 30 minutes.  Time when they could have been providing actual news.  After all, it’s not like nothing else is going on – China, North Korea, Russian support of Assad, good economic news at home, etc., etc.  Surely any of those was more deserving of the lead story position.

Andrea Mitchell claims that it is the job of the news to be adversarial.  Apparently others in the profession agree and agree to the extent that they believe adversarial attacks of little significance are more important than major news stores.  Funny, I always thought the job of the news was to inform us, to give us the facts so that we could use our own minds to assess those facts.  How silly of me, and how wrong that belief has become in this day and age.

This all might be entertaining or funny if it weren’t so sad and so detrimental to our country.  By failing to inform us the media is participating in creating an uninformed electorate, that is, a people who are ripe for picking by those more interested in tearing our democracy apart than in supporting it.  By clearly picking sides in political debates, by taking positions that affiliate with a particular political party, the media easily becomes a propaganda arm of that party.  And by acting as attack dogs against individuals, the media models a behavior better left on some elementary school playground.

It is becoming more and more difficult to watch the news, and even more difficult to take it seriously.  I hope that others feel this way, because that means they must realize that what they are getting on the news is neither a total nor an objective picture of what is going on.  I have no idea what, if anything, can make the news return to quality journalism, but I hope that it does happen, and sooner rather than later, because without access to quality journalism and a fair and objective media, we lose the informed electorate which is a cornerstone of our democracy:  And, when the cornerstone crumbles and falls, the entire building that it supports loses stability.